How To Configure Telnet on Cisco Router or Switch

A device can be managed either locally or remotely. There are various protocols, tools, and services (such as Telnet, Secure Shell, and Putty) that are used to manage devices remotely. These tools are also referred as remote administration tools. Similar to Cisco routers, a Cisco switch can also be managed using the remote administrator tool. In this post, we will explain how to configure Telnet on a Cisco router or switch.

Configuring Telnet on a Cisco router or switch is pretty simple. It requires just a few commands and your device, whether it is a router or switch, will be ready to access from a remote location. We will use the following simple topology to configure Telnet.

Steps to Configure Telnet on Cisco Router or Switch

First of all, execute the following command to change the current hostname as Switch1.

Switch(config)#hostname Switch1

Next, configure an IP address on the switch. Unlike the routers, typically switch does not require to be configured with an IP address. However, we need to configure an IP address on the switch’s VLAN 1 interface. The following commands will configure 10.0.0.100/8 IP address on the VLAN 1 interface.

In the preceding commands, vty −means virtual terminal and 0 4 means ─total five (0 to 4) users can access the switch remotely at a time. 123456 is the password that the remote users need to know in order to connect to the switch.

Once you have done your configuration on switch1, move on to PC0. Configure 10.0.0.1/8 IP address on PC0.

After configuring the appropriate IP address on the PC, open the Command Prompt window of the PC, type telnet 10.0.0.100 and press Enter.

At the Password: prompt, type your telnet password (123456) and verify that you are able to connect to switch’s console remotely.

In the preceding figure, you can see that you are successfully connected to the switch’s console remotely. At the Switch1> prompt (User EXEC mode), you can execute all the commands that you can use locally.

In this post, we have learned how to configure Telnet on a Cisco router or switch. We would love to hear you and your valuable suggestions to improve the article. Please also share the article to others, it will not cost you anything.